Caesar Salad

I love Caesar Salad and make it at least twice a week. After years of trying to come up with a precise formula to guarantee perfect results, I’ve adopted the basic method and most of the simplicity which Julia Child attributed to the salad popularized by Caesar Cardini’s Tijuana restaurant in the 1920s. The technique calls for adding the dressing ingredients and mixing them directly on the lettuce. My concession to the formula is to omit the egg cooked for one minute; when we had our own egg-laying chickens and were unconcerned about the possibility of salmonella I experimented with the addition of almost raw egg, but a stellar Caesar Salad I ate in a Hartford restaurant convinced me that it was more important to focus on the perfect balance of bright lemon than the runny egg texture, and I find that a good quality olive oil compensates well for the viscosity of the missing egg. Freshly made croutons are also a big factor and I’ve come up with a method for making them easily so that’s never a deterrent to enjoying this salad.

 

This will take some practice to figure out how to make this to suit your tastes, but if you love Caesar Salad, it’s a worthwhile investment of your time.

 

SERVES 4

 

Ingredients: 

FOR THE CROUTONS:

3 slices of French bread

Olive oil

1 clove of garlic, minced

 

FOR THE SALAD:

1 large head of romaine lettuce, washed, dried, and torn into bite size pieces

¼ cup, approximately, of olive oil

Worcestershire sauce

½ lemon

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

2 tablespoons freshly grated parmesan cheese

 

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Instructions:

▪ Have all the ingredients at hand. Take a pinch of the minced garlic and rub the salad bowl with it. Make the croutons: rub both sides of the bread pieces with olive oil, and then with the minced garlic. Place the coated bread slices in a frying pan, a cast iron if you have one, and set over medium heat. Cook for a few minutes until the bottom is brown, and then turn to brown the other side. Remove from heat and let the slices cool a bit before cutting into croutons.

 

▪ Put the lettuce in the salad bowl, pour two tablespoons of oil over the lettuce and toss. Pour another two tablespoons over the lettuce and toss again. The lettuce should all be coated with oil, so add a bit more if you need to.

 

▪ Squeeze the juice from the lemon half over the lettuce, then sprinkle with a few drops of Worcestershire sauce, salt and pepper, and toss again. Sprinkle on the cheese, toss, and then add the croutons and give it a final toss.